Toronto Maple Leafs: Face-Offs And The Magic Of Unicorns

Toronto Maple Leafs Mike Babcock likes to talk about getting better at face-offs, as if it brings something of value simply by happening.

He’s not the only one. It’s a hot topic, and not just for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The problem, though, is that face-off wins by themselves are borderline as useful as plus/minus statistics.

Here’s a look at teams score-adjusted Fenwick, face-off percentage and points total since January 1st (prior to 12 March games).

It’s a closer connection between points and SAF, if you want something extremely simple.

The quick and dirty reply for face-offs is that you actually get possession of the puck by winning a face-off. That’s true, but let’s say you win the face-off and the player who now has the puck turns it over immediately. Was the face-off win worth anything? Not really.

Puckbase has a good face-off/possession metric if you want to find some value in draws that’s defined as this:

"Net Shots Post-Faceoff (NSPF) estimates a face-off taker’s contribution to puck possession by counting shot flow (shots-for minus shots-against) during the 10 seconds following a player’s face-offs in 5-versus-5 situations, and comparing it to a league-average face-off taker. NSPF is calculated for each of the offensive, defensive, and netural zones; the overall NSPF is their sum."

You’re essentially finding which face-off players get useful possession off a draw versus a player who wins a draw and the defender slaps it 100 feet into the other zone. It’s still a value searching goose chase.

Even using that number it’s still hard to justify making a trade or signing based on a player winning face-offs. There’s no worthwhile link between face-offs and possession that require a team excel at the former to excel at the latter.

You can be good at face-offs and terrible at everything else. That makes you terrible. You can be bad at face-offs and good at everything else. That makes you good. Why? Because over the course of a season the face-off percentage of teams is irrelevant.

Over a season of, say, 4500 faceoffs, if a team wins 54.7% (the current highest total) they’ll win 2461 face-offs. If a team wins 47.0% (the current lowest total) they’ll win 2115 face-offs. That’s 346 in the difference, or a difference of 4.2 wins per game.

That’s 4.2 face-off wins per game, for the best team compared to the worst team. If we go to the middle of the pack (15th) team in face-off percentage (50.0%) we get a difference of 211 or 2.57 per game.

Do those 2.57 face-offs generate any worthwhile possession? Some nights maybe, some nights maybe not. You’re wasting time on a maybe-scenario when you can be concerned with the other 59 minutes worth of play that isn’t a face-off. I even feel like I wasted my own time looking up those face-off numbers. Face-offs more often than not don’t generate meaningful possession.

Now, do I want the Leafs to win the draw in the defensive zone with 10 seconds left in the third period when it’s tied? Sure, it would ease my mind, but I’m more concerned with what happens after the draw. That’s the real game. That’s the real impact. Winning that draw doesn’t guarantee that face-off will have an actual value on the other 9.5 seconds.

I imagine the feeling of winning a draw back to Hunwick or Polak is like driving through an intersection with your eyes closed. It may or may not work out well.

Auston Matthews made the biggest joke of face-offs ever earlier in the year when he did this:

You can chalk “he’s good at face-offs” up in the same category as the following as far as value toward winning goes:

• Grit
• Good veteran guy
• Plus/minus
• Hit leaders/Fighters

The moral of the story is that face-off win percentage isn’t an indication of a good or bad player, nor is it a reason to push to acquire or sign a player.

Since I mentioned unicorns in the title, I figure I should at least mention them. Unicorns aren’t real and neither is value in face-off wins, you’re welcome.